Wicked Broadway musical tour returns to Salt Lake City for the second time and currently performing at Capitol Theatre – UT from July 18 to August 26, 2012. Here is the Wicked musical review by Ben Fulton.

The greatest pleasure of this touring production of “Wicked,” playing through Aug. 26 at Capitol Theatre, is watching the interplay blossom, falter and mature between Alli Mauzey, who is a sheer delight as Glinda, and Nicole Parker, who delivers a passionate, brooding Elphaba.

If there’s no shortage of gushing when it comes to Stephen Schwartz’s and Winnie Holzman’s “Wicked”— and the day the hype runs out ain’t coming anytime soon — it’s because the musical hits the mercurial sweet-spot of both powerful story and the glory of what’s possible on the live theater stage.

This would all feel inflated and ponderous if the story itself were even slightly subpar. Buttressing all the marvelous stage architecture on display, thankfully, is a powerful interplay of peer pressure, prejudice and even hints of racism in an immediately recognizable story.

What happens when the ebullient but good-hearted bad girl, enamored of her own beauty and status, makes friends with the geek girl, the outsider ridiculed for her looks but imbued with a sense of principle and justice that looks beyond society’s norms? “Wicked” takes that premise then complicates it with all of real life’s sticky situations of jealousy, hard choices, and experiments gone horribly wrong.

The genius of “Wicked” is that, in the fashion all great fairy tales, it’s carried along by magical events, sights and metaphors to create an allegory that never feels like an allegory.

When Glinda attempts to transform Elphaba’s wardrobe by magic wand, the scene says more about the early challenges of friendship than mere magic. When Elphaba takes to the sky to announce her revolt against the Wizard, a sight stupendous enough by itself, we’re granted a vision of what it means to — irony excused — stand on principle.

Genius though it was for Schwartz to build a musical on the dual foundation of Gregory Maquire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and by extension L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Oz, the key to “Wicked” is the Glinda-Elphaba match.

Parker was also impressive as the brooding, green-skinned Elphaba with a heart for animals and their suffering, a keen eye for the abuse of power, and a cynic’s despair. About the only fault one might find with the story is that the crux of Elphaba’s principled stand relies too much on a pre-packaged, PETA-approved message of animal rights.

No matter. “Wicked” is its own species of theater animal. A true blockbuster, it’s better loved than overly analyzed; more fun to adore than nitpick. If all goes well the night you see it — if you’re fortunate enough to have tickets, that is — you may well walk out of the theater feeling that, even at the price of your $195 ticket, you still got the entertainment bargain of a lifetime.